In 1977 Bolden received a master’s degree in systems management from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1979 and flew on test projects involving the A-6 and A-7 attack aircraft. In 1980 he was selected as an astronaut by NASA.

During his time at NASA, Bolden made four spaceflights, the first of which was as the pilot of the STS-61C mission (launched January 12, 1986) on the space shuttleColumbia. During the six-day flight, the seven-man crew launched a communications satellite. On his second spaceflight, he piloted STS-31 (April 24–29, 1990), on which the space shuttle Discoverydeployed the Hubble Space Telescope.

Bolden was commander of his next two spaceflights. On STS-45 (March 24–April 2, 1992), the space shuttle Atlantis carried the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science, a laboratory on a pallet housed in the space shuttle’s cargo bay that contained 12 experiments studying Earth’s atmosphere. STS-60 (February 3–11, 1994) was the first U.S. spaceflight to have as part of its crew a Russian cosmonaut, mission specialist Sergey Krikalyov.

Bolden retired from NASA in 1994. He returned to the Marine Corps and in 1998 reached the rank of major general. He retired from the corps in 2003. In 2009 Pres. Barack Obama named him as NASA administrator. He was the first African American to hold that position.

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